GulfMark Offshore centralizes data backup and recovery with Druva

GulfMark Offshore owns, operates, and manages a modern fleet of offshore support vessels including platform supply, anchor handling towing supply, fast supply vessels, and specialty vessels. Since 1990, GulfMark Offshore has steadily evolved into one of the top marine-services providers for offshore vessels that primarily support oil drilling operations. GulfMark Offshore is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and has regional offices around the world in Louisiana, Mexico, Trinidad, Brazil, United Kingdom, Norway, and Singapore.

With a geographically dispersed workforce coordinating business-critical activities across various time zones, the GulfMark Offshore IT team didn’t have a standardized process for backing up their files. “We had five different backup technologies across the globe, and there were many places to look to see what was going on. It’s just harder to manage that way,” says Kevin Adams, global IT infrastructure manager at GulfMark Offshore.

GulfMark Offshore has as many as 15 virtual machines (VMs) per site, has data stored in the cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS), and even has servers on their offshore supply vessels that can be at sea for up to three weeks at a time. Before adopting the Druva solution, when a server went down, data recovery was a long manual process that took many days to complete — creating significant disruption for those who relied on the data for normal operations. Because regional teams were using different backup solutions, successfully managing this global, dynamic, and complex infrastructure was nearly impossible. “In one region, we thought we had fully retired tapes, only to discover they were literally still storing tape in a safe,” recalls Kevin.

To improve its productivity and agility, GulfMark Offshore needed a centralized data protection and recovery solution that could streamline their data recovery process, as well as scale up with the company’s rapid growth. After thorough market research and proof of concept testing, GulfMark Offshore found its go-to solution with Druva Phoenix.

Since moving to the Druva Phoenix centralized cloud-based system, the GulfMark Offshore staff at all sites now have the ability to independently perform restores quickly, without having to contact teams in other time zones or face lengthy disruptions. By harnessing the native efficiencies and global reach of AWS, Druva Phoenix delivers a unique cloud-first approach that has provided GulfMark Offshore with unparalleled storage flexibility, data durability, and security. “The restore times were faster than we expected. By storing the data in region in AWS, we don’t have to send a backup across the globe,” says Kevin.

GulfMark Offshore has benefited from the efficiencies of Druva Phoenix’s superior flexibility, visibility, and security. They have increased overall performance, lowered risk, and reduced the overall effort of managing their IT environment.

I had a wish list of what our data backup solution would be, and Druva ticked all the boxes.”

— Kevin Adams, global IT infrastructure manager, GulfMark Offshore